Best Comedy Movies of 2026, Ranked: The 10 Funniest So Far — From Power Ballad to The Invite

FilmRated score 78 (Rotten Tomatoes 88%, Metacritic 67). John Carney, the Irish director of Once and Sing Street, makes films about people who write songs, and this is his version about middle age. Paul Rudd plays Rick, a wedding singer whose own career never happened. At a gig he meets Danny, a boy-band star on the way down, played by Nick Jonas, and the two write together through a long night. Then Danny turns one of Rick's songs into the hit that revives his career, and Rick wants his name on it.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics consensus calls Rudd and Jonas "harmonious screen partners" and the film "a mellow dramedy," and mellow is the right word. It is funnier in its first half, when the two men are just enjoying each other, than in the second, when the dispute takes over. The gap between its two scores shows that most critics liked it without loving it. Lionsgate opened it in limited release on May 29 and wide on June 5; it runs 98 minutes, is rated R, and grossed $3.4 million against a $10 million budget, so most people who see it will find it at home.

FilmRated score 79 (Rotten Tomatoes 95%, Metacritic 62). The newest film on the list is also the smallest. On a remote Scottish island, two adult siblings live by the rules their late father left them: protect the island, survive, and allow no incomer. Then one arrives. Domhnall Gleeson plays Daniel, an awkward council official sent to evacuate them, who brings paperwork, veganism and the internet to people who hunt seabirds for dinner. Gayle Rankin and Grant O'Rourke play the siblings, and Louis Paxton directs.

This is the entry to treat with the most caution. The 33 points between its Tomatometer and its Metascore make the widest gap of any film here, and the Metascore rests on only 16 reviews. In plain terms, nearly every critic who saw it recommended it, but few raved. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus praises its "inviting performances and quirky edge" and calls it "a refreshingly good-natured character study." It opened in limited U.S. release on September 25 through Sumerian Pictures, runs 102 minutes and is rated R. If you like gentle British and Irish comedies about odd people in beautiful places, it is made for you.

FilmRated score 80 (Rotten Tomatoes 92%, Metacritic 67). Gregg Araki has been making confrontational independent films since the early 1990s, and Rotten Tomatoes' consensus calls this "one of indie stalwart Gregg Araki's most accessible works yet." Cooper Hoffman plays Elliot, a young man who gets a job with a famous artist and provocateur, Erika Tracy, played by Olivia Wilde. She makes him her sexual muse, and the arrangement moves from fantasy into obsession, betrayal and, eventually, a murder. Araki wrote it with Karley Sciortino.

The title is not a tease: this is an explicit, R-rated comedy about sex and power, and it sends up the contemporary art world along the way. It is also where critics and audiences part most sharply on this list. The Tomatometer is 92%, but the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 64%, and the audience summary there mentions "uneven pacing." It premiered at Sundance in January, opened in limited release on July 31 through Magnolia Pictures, runs a brisk 90 minutes and has grossed $2.2 million. It is not for a family evening, and not for anyone who wants their comedies comfortable.

FilmRated score 80 (Rotten Tomatoes 89%, Metacritic 70). The seventh film in the Despicable Me series is the best reviewed of them. Set in 1927, as silent films give way to sound, it sends the Minions to Old Hollywood, where they become movie stars, lose everything and try to make a monster picture of their own, with the results the title suggests. Pierre Coffin, who also voices the Minions, directs; Trey Parker, Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg and Jeff Bridges are in the voice cast.

Rotten Tomatoes' consensus calls it an "affectionate and charming sendup of moviemaking magic" and "the franchise's most roundly enjoyable entry yet." The setting is what lifts it: the Minions barely speak, which makes them natural silent-comedy performers, and the audience summary on Rotten Tomatoes singles out its slapstick. It runs exactly 90 minutes and is rated PG. Universal released it on July 1, and it has grossed $526 million worldwide on an $85 million budget. Adults get more from it than they would expect to.

FilmRated score 82 (Rotten Tomatoes 92%, Metacritic 71). Boots Riley's first feature since Sorry to Bother You in 2018 follows a crew of professional shoplifters, the boosters of the title, who decide to take on a ruthless fashion mogul. Keke Palmer leads a cast that includes Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle and Demi Moore. As in Riley's first film, the plot begins as a caper and then goes somewhere much stranger.

The consensus on Rotten Tomatoes calls it "a raucous capitalist critique" that is "as funny as it is thought-provoking," which is a fair warning as well as praise: Riley makes political comedies, and the argument is never far from the jokes. The audience score is 75%, well below the critics' 92%. Neon opened it on May 22 after a premiere at South by Southwest. It is rated R and runs just under two hours, and it grossed $9.7 million on a $20 million budget. See it if you liked Sorry to Bother You. If that film lost you in its last act, this one is unlikely to win you back.

FilmRated score 83 (Rotten Tomatoes 92%, Metacritic 73). The question going in was whether anyone needed a fifth one. The answer from 328 critics is a qualified yes. This time the threat to Woody, Buzz and Jessie is not a new toy but a tablet: Lilypad, voiced by Greta Lee, becomes the favorite plaything of their kid, Bonnie. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack return, and Andrew Stanton, who has written on every film in the series, directs for the first time.

Rotten Tomatoes' consensus says the film "largely sidesteps franchise fatigue," and the word "largely" explains the Metascore of 73, the same as Hoppers. It is a warm, well-built family comedy about children and screens, a subject most parents in the audience will recognize, and it is not the event the first three films were. Audiences did not mind: the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is 94%, and the worldwide gross stands at $1.147 billion on a $250 million budget, the largest of any film on this list. It runs 102 minutes and is rated PG.

FilmRated score 84 (Rotten Tomatoes 95%, Metacritic 72). The premise sounds like a dare. A shepherd named George, played by Hugh Jackman, reads detective novels aloud to his flock every night. When he is found dead, the sheep, who have been listening all along, set out to find the killer. Craig Mazin, the writer of Chernobyl and The Last of Us, adapted Leonie Swann's 2005 novel Three Bags Full, and Kyle Balda directs. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Chris O'Dowd and Patrick Stewart are among the voices of the flock; Emma Thompson, Nicholas Braun and Nicholas Galitzine are among the human cast.

The consensus calls it "drolly funny and sweet as a lamb" and notes that it "bundles disarmingly profound themes in a cozy package." That second part matters. It is a film about a flock dealing with a death, and it treats that honestly, which is why it works for adults and may prompt questions from small children. It ties Hoppers on our score and sits one place lower because its Metascore is a point behind. The audience score is 96%, the highest of any film here. It runs 109 minutes, is rated PG, and grossed $133 million on a $75 million budget. It also appears in our ranking of the year's best mystery and crime films.

FilmRated score 84 (Rotten Tomatoes 94%, Metacritic 73). Pixar's original film of the year has the best comic idea of any animated release in 2026. Scientists have learned to "hop" a human mind into a lifelike robotic animal. Mabel Tanaka, a college student voiced by Piper Curda, uses the technology to become a beaver so that she can talk to the animals whose habitat is about to be destroyed, and accidentally starts an uprising. Bobby Moynihan and Jon Hamm co-star, and Daniel Chong, the creator of We Bare Bears, directs.

Rotten Tomatoes' consensus goes further than usual, saying it "might just be the funniest entry in the Pixar canon yet." That is the reason to choose it over the studio's other 2026 film. Toy Story 5 is the more emotional of the two, and Hoppers is the one critics singled out for its jokes. It opened on March 6, runs 104 minutes, is rated PG, and grossed $389.7 million worldwide on a $150 million budget, a healthy result for a Pixar original.

FilmRated score 87 (Rotten Tomatoes 96%, Metacritic 77). The most improbable release of the year is a film that was finished years ago and nearly destroyed. Warner Bros. Discovery shelved the completed movie in 2023, and it reached theaters on August 28, 2026, only after the independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment acquired it. The story suits that history. After decades of faulty rockets and anvils, Wile E. Coyote hires a billboard lawyer, played by Will Forte, and sues the Acme Corporation. John Cena plays the lawyer on the other side.

Dave Green directs, from a script by Samy Burch that is loosely based on a 1990 New Yorker humor piece by Ian Frazier. It mixes live action and animation in the manner of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Rotten Tomatoes' consensus calls it "a daffy satire that's equal parts heart and wily humor." Critics and audiences agree to an unusual degree: 96% and 94%. It runs 103 minutes, is rated PG, and has grossed $110 million against a budget of about $70 million. It is the best family comedy of the year, and the courtroom scenes are funnier for adults than for children.

FilmRated score 89 (Rotten Tomatoes 96%, Metacritic 82). The best-reviewed comedy of 2026 takes place almost entirely in one apartment over one evening. Joe and Angela, played by Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde, are a married couple who are barely speaking. They invite their upstairs neighbors, played by Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, to dinner, and the evening does not go where either couple expects. Wilde also directs, from a screenplay by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. It is an English-language remake of Cesc Gay's 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs.

The consensus on Rotten Tomatoes calls it "perversely funny" and "a sophisticated farce," and says it gives "its quartet of fine actors some of their best material yet." The Metascore of 82 is the highest on this list by five points, which means critics did not just approve of it. It is a comedy for adults in the old sense: four people, a lot of wine, and a conversation that keeps getting worse. A24 opened it on June 26 after a Sundance premiere. It is rated R, runs 107 minutes, and it has grossed $59.1 million worldwide on a $15 million budget, the best return on this list.

Three things stand out when the ten are put side by side. First, half of the list is family filmmaking: Hoppers, Toy Story 5 and Minions & Monsters are fully animated, and Coyote vs. Acme and The Sheep Detectives mix animation with live action. Second, the adult comedies are well reviewed and little seen. Leave out The Invite, and the four R-rated films here grossed about $15 million between them. Third, Olivia Wilde had a remarkable year in the genre: she directed the film in first place and stars in the one in eighth.

Some well-known titles are missing for a reason. Stop! That! Train!, the drag-queen disaster spoof with RuPaul, and the animated basketball comedy GOAT both score 72 on our math and finished just outside the ten. The Devil Wears Prada 2 has a 78% Tomatometer, which is respectable and not enough. The Scary Movie revival sits at 23%. Park Chan-wook's black comedy No Other Choice, which would have placed first, opened in U.S. theaters on December 25, 2025, and counts as last year's film. Focker-In-Law, with Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller and Ariana Grande, does not open until November 25 and has no reviews yet.

Which should you watch first? For a night without children, The Invite, then I Love Boosters if you want something wilder. With children, Coyote vs. Acme for the widest age range and Hoppers for the most laughs. For a quiet evening, Power Ballad or The Incomer. And if you want one film that works for nearly everyone in the house, The Sheep Detectives has the highest audience score of the year. We will update this ranking in December, when the last comedies of 2026 have been reviewed.